


Six Times Juliet Burke Stared Death in the Face (and One Time He Stared Back)

by shakespearespaz



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 17:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespearespaz/pseuds/shakespearespaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is inescapable and Juliet is no exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Times Juliet Burke Stared Death in the Face (and One Time He Stared Back)

_One_

Her hands felt colder than the metal table. Everyone said it was the shock that came first, the numbness that made her head swim and the world blur. The bus remained a blur and shocking was too small a word; it had been instantaneous.

All she felt was clarity and confusion.

She was standing flat against the white tiles, the air smelling of nothing. She was there, but the reality of death carried her elsewhere. She’d dreamt about this. That only made the guilt knot tighter in her stomach.

The inkling that this was only the beginning crawled through the emptiness.

_Two_

He said she was helping. It was his rote answer every time. She was _needed._ Every failure taught them more.

The third time she couldn’t swallow it and hid in her little yellow house for a week. She was sick, she said, and she refused to acknowledge it as a lie. She was sick of two for one and trimesters and hypotheses that should have made sense and research that should have worked.

She was sick of the smell of death next to perfumed tropical paths.

Ben knew very well that through her nightmares flowed the blood of mothers and sons and daughters.

 

_Three_

Steady, like she remembered from her training. On some level, it was for Rachel. On another, Goodwin. Legally, she’d call it self-defense.

He fell and she faced the others like it wasn’t the first human life she had taken.

The shots still vibrated in her ears and fingertips, but her voice stayed smooth. There would be time later for remorse, to mourn whatever part of her had been smothered by this relentless place.

She had confused faces to deal with first.

Besides, she had never liked Danny Pickett that much.

 

_Four_

She thought for a moment he had put the bullet in her. Tom slumped forward onto the soft sand, and something lodged in her throat. Her heart clambered messily and suddenly she was freezing despite the heat.

Sawyer watched her check him, press two fingers into the worn skin, to ensure that he was dead. It was more than the fact that it was Tom _,_ the only person on the island who in a perverted way she might have called family.

To stop playing the game meant her body in ground too.

She dug the shovel into the earth and ignored Sawyer’s eyes on her.

 

_Five_

The absence gutted her more than a dead body would have. Her head still spun from the flash, but the woman was gone, disappeared in a way that made Juliet’s skin tingle, and nose itch from dripping blood, and scalp ache from dirty hands twisted in her yellow hair.

She pushed the tension to her shoulders and kept the rifle close.

It was safe, solid.

But it wouldn’t let her outrun her death forever sung warm raindrops hitting the dark leaves.

_Six_

The first hit did nothing and frustration clawed at her. Anguish ripped through her as she hit it again. She would not die in pool of her own blood without taking something with her and she stared down her end with the tears and rage of a woman breaking.

Fate had ravished her and left her battered and alone.

Alone.

Death was always alone.

 

_One_

Death cupped her face gently.

He calmed the panic that fluttered in her trapped chest. Large hands lifted her, supporting in familiar places and budging memories and blue.

The color of the sky, not dirt or blood.

Blue eyes locked with hers through sweat and grime and decades. She never thought Death would be merciful, but last breaths whistled through her tattered, tired body.

“Kiss me, James.”

_James._

_It isn’t fair_ she whimpered as Death’s warm lips pressed hers closed.


End file.
